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Makerfire Armor 65 Lite outdoor flight. There was a light breeze coming from Taal but it handled pretty well.

The Armor 65 Lite is a ready-to-fly FPV racing nano quadcopter thatâ€™s great for kids and adults alike, for the beginner to intermediate and even all the way to the advanced pilot. It comes already pre-flashed with Silverware acro firmware, equipped with a 800TVL camera, tough Armor 65 frame, and powerful 17600KV 7x16mm motors. No need to upgrade anytime soon.

The all new Armor 65 Lite is a ready-to-fly FPV racing nano quadcopter thatâ€™s great for kids and adults alike, for the beginner to intermediate and even all the way to the advanced pilot. It comes already equipped with a 800TVL camera, tough Armor 65 frame, and powerful 17600KV 7x16mm motors. No need to upgrade anytime soon.

Best of all, it comes pre-flashed with Silverware. Silverware is an open-source flight controller firmware developed by SilverXXX for F0 FCs. It was forked and further refined by NotFastEnuf.

It utilizes the high-speed BayangToys protocol. A transmitter is already included but you can choose to use multiprotocol transmitters or modules such as the Jumper T8/12, Devo 7e/10 with DeviationTX, and iRangeX IRX4/6, and MTX-9D.

This is not your average toy quadcopter converted to a whoop. This is a purposely designed and built whoop. And its purpose is FUN!

When you start thinking (fantasizing?) of being a drone racer, you will want to know how fast you are around your home track: You need a lap timer to record the time elapsed from the time you leave the starting gate to the time you pass it again. There are usually two ways of doing this: attaching a transponder (additional equipment) or using the RF signal of the VTX (no additional equipment). Needless to say, we will be doing the latter approach.

The key component is the RX5808 module which is the heart of most, if not all, video receivers in the market. The module receives the VTX signal and converts it to audio and video. It also measures and provide the signal strength (RSSI value). What the lap timer does is to compare the RSSI with a set threshold. If the RSSI value is above the threshold, the corresponding drone is considered passing a finish gate and the time elapsed is recorded.

There are two maybe three active lap timer projects online: Chorus RF Laptimer and PIDFlight Lap. For this project, we will adopt the schematic and use the software and firmware of PIDFlight Lap. However, to keep things simple for now, we will simplify the schematic and use connected mode where the lap timer is connected directly to and powered from a computer or Android phone (via OTG).

Prepare buzzer. The short leg is ground, the long leg is positive. This is also indicated on the top of the buzzer body.

Following the schematic, insert the components to the breadboard

Install Arduino Nano driver

Install Arduino IDE

Install the appropriate firmware.For Chorus RF Laptimer, you can download the Arduino sketch, load it on the Arduino IDE, and upload to the Arduino nano. For PIDFlight Lap, you will get a .hex file and you will need to upload manually. You can use XLoader on Windows or Hex Uploader on the Mac. Or use avrdude directly:

The antenna of a top-mounted camera is prone to breakage. A low-profile design reduces that risk. It also allows you to hit smaller gaps (as skills permit) and look cooler, too. Here’s how to build a low-profile brushless whoop.

A LED strip and a buzzer are useful in providing visual and audible cues to what’s happening with your quad and also help in locating it. We’ll add a LED strip and a buzzer to my brushless whoop build. I used a 2-in-1 LED and buzzer module for this modification.